In January, I almost finished preparing the 2 user research activities for Phase 7 of Sponsor 9.

We chose 2 activites that:

- Don't require much facilitation skills from partners - Are lightweight for partners to report - Benefit from a slightly bigger numbers of participants (~20) - Are easy to schedule during the training

We decided to organize:

- Desirability study of the new illustrations

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/work_items/133

This one takes the form of a survey that all training participants can fill up on their own at the beginning of the training.

https://survey.torproject.org/index.php/983521

- Card sorting on support portal

Partners can get several participants to do the card sorting in parallel and ask them to self-report their results as a survey.

https://survey.torproject.org/index.php/168241

As you can see in both, I also implemented a reusable consent and demographics questionnaire that can be either added at the beginning of another research survey or printed on paper.

I created a Tor theme for LimeSurvey that uses the Tor colors and logo, prints well on paper, and displays better on mobile. Thanks @lavamind for the speedy deployment!

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/fruity_twentythree_tor

End of March, I started another short contract with Tor to help with:

- S09: Analysis of the user research from the Privacy Resilience Grants - S131: Mullvad Browser system installer - S101: Usability testing of Tor VPN

In April,

- S09

Finished preparing the material for the user research and onboarded the 3 partners who are going to do the research in East Africa in April-May.

* Desirability study of new illustrations: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/137

* Card sorting on support-dot-menu: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/8

- S131

Helped @pierov and @ruihildt with their discussion on the Mullvad Browser installer and drew 2 iterations of mockups for the whole flow.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-browser/-/issues/200

- S101

Discussed a timeline and scope for the usability tests and drafted tasks and interview questions.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/69

The tests are scheduled for May 20-26 in Mexico City, while you're all busy in Portugal :)

Prepared a screening survey and started recruiting for the tests.

Tested 0.5.0 and 0.6.0 and reported 3 important bugs that should be fixed before we do the usability tests.

* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/vpn/-/issues/158 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/vpn/-/issues/159 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/vpn/-/issues/160

Cheers,

My second short contract this year ended last week, so I'm reporting for June already.

### Desirability study (S09, ux/research#137)

Finished analyzing the desirability study that we did as part of the Privacy Resilience Grants with partners in East Africa.

Report: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/uploads/f64496059f692f7d071355...

The new illustrations were described positively by participants overall.

Tor was perceived as advanced technology that is helpful, effective, and trustworthy, but not as approachable as we want to be.

To improve, we should focus on simplicity and clarity.

### Card sorting (S09, ux/research#8)

Finished analyzing the card sorting that we also did as part of the Privacy Resilience Grants.

Report: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/uploads/1cf2bd5006067633698ac3...

Most participants used a classification scheme based on value (or threat, it's opposite) with categories such as "Censorship", "Privacy", "Identity", and "Connectivity", while support.torproject.org has much more emphasis on technologies, with categories such as "Tor Browser", "Tor Mobile", "HTTPS", etc.

### Retrospective on user research for Sponsor 9

I did a solo retrospective on these 2 studies and Sponsor 9 in general.

For both studies, I think that we would have had better results, in less time, and maybe even cheaper, by doing the studies ourselves.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/138

### Mullvad Browser installer (S131, applications/mullvad-browser#200)

Reviewed the strings for Mullvad Browser Installer:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/merge_req...